


Iconoclasm

by DetournementArc



Category: Original Work
Genre: Prose Poem, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:54:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24964075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DetournementArc/pseuds/DetournementArc
Kudos: 1





	Iconoclasm

A god is dying today.

The footfall of invaders that have laid siege to the temple for weeks strikes with an arrhythmic cacophony of staccato noise. Statues honoring the old god's divinity are pulled down and smashed, the sigils and runes in the walls defaced. Yesterday, these invaders were a barbarian horde, tomorrow they will be the civilized people and rightful lords of this land.

Gods do not age, they have no beginning nor end that fits within the diminutive scope of human time; when a god's shrine falls, when no worship of them glides over pious lips, it means they have never existed. The men who shatter idols become sculptors of eternity, the entire history of heaven is broken and remade by the hammer.  
One ponders the politics of heaven, whether the gods warring above us as the nations of men do upon the fundament of the soil. The king or general who has laid waste to their enemies seizes the reins of history and the quill of the scribe, and it is as if their ascendance was the preordained will of the cosmos. Perhaps the gods share that belief. Perhaps the new god that will be throned here fights in heaven, claiming the providence of the mortal soul as His vindication. Perhaps heaven and earth, mirror-like, share the tumult of war, a lineage of a thousand emperors and almighties, each as eternal and ineffable as the last.


End file.
